Aster DM Healthcare closes in on initial public offering

Aster DM Healthcare, which operates hospitals and pharmacies across the region, is finalising an initial public offering.

India is among the locations under consideration for the share sale, which is planned for its next financial year that starts in April, according to the chairman Dr Azad Moopen.

While the company does not disclose its financial details it is understood to have generated revenues of about US$600 million in its current financial year.

The IPO comes as the group prepares to open the first of five hospitals planned across the country. Today it will announce the opening of Aster Hospital Mankhool, the largest of its UAE hospitals.

“We are in the run-up to an IPO,” said Dr Moopen in an interview on the sidelines of the Arab Health convention in Dubai yesterday. “We hope to be able to do it in the next financial year, which starts from April. We are planning to submit our papers within the next couple of months.”

The fast-expanding healthcare operator which owns Dubai’s Medcare Hospital and the Aster pharmacy chain, will follow other groups such as NMC Health and Al Noor Hospitals Group, which have already gone public.

With a rapidly expanding population, the introduction of mandatory health insurance schemes and a high incidence of chronic illness, healthcare groups are investing billions of dollars in new hospitals and clinics across the region.

Aster DM Healthcare was founded in 1987 by Dr Moopen and has expanded rapidly throughout the Arabian Gulf and India.

By its own estimates its revenues have expanded at a compounded annual growth rate of about 35 per cent over the past seven years.

Today it runs about 230 establishments including hospitals, clinics and pharmacies and is expected to have close to 300 by 2017.

It operates about 2,500 beds across its network with an additional 600 planned for the next two years under committed projects. Total healthcare spending across the region is expected to hit $60 billion by 2025, according to McKinsey & Co estimates, from about $12bn in 2006.

Such spending has led to a scramble by local and international healthcare groups to develop more hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centres to keep pace with spiralling demand.

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